Good-bye Maoriland: The Songs and Sounds of New Zealand's Great War

Chris Bourke

A journey inside the heart of New Zealand’s World War I experience through song.

They left their Southern Lands,
They sailed across the sea;
They fought the Hun, they fought the Turk
For truth and liberty.

Now Anzac Day has come to stay,
And bring us sacred joy;
Though wooden crosses be swept away –
We’ll never forget our boys.

– Jane Morison, ‘We’ll never forget our boys’, 1917

Be it ‘Tipperary’ or ‘Pokarekare’, the morning reveille or the bugle’s last post, concert parties at the front or patriotic songs at home, music was central to New Zealand’s experience of the First World War. In Good-Bye Maoriland, the acclaimed author of Blue Smoke: The Lost Dawn of New Zealand Popular Music introduces us the songs and sounds of World War I in order to take us deep inside the human experience of war.

Author

Chris Bourke is a writer, journalist, editor and radio producer. He has been arts and books editor at the NZ Listener, editor of Rip It Up and Real Groove, and producer of Radio New Zealand’s Saturday Morning with Kim Hill. He wrote the best-selling, definitive biography of Crowded House, Something So Strong (1997) and Blue Smoke: The Lost Dawn of New Zealand Popular Music, 1918-1964 (AUP, 2010). At the 2011 New Zealand Post Book Awards Blue Smoke won the People's Choice Award, the General Nonfiction Award and the Book of the Year Award. Chris Bourke is currently content director at Audioculture: The Noisy Library of New Zealand Music (www.audioculture.co.nz).